Court Cases

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California and NCYL have charged school officials in two Humboldt County towns with intentionally discriminating against Native American and Black students by allowing the pervasive racial and sexual harassment of these students to go unchallenged.

21 students and alumni filed a federal lawsuit on Feb. 22, 2012 against UC Davis over the University's treatment of protesters during a Nov. 18, 2011 demonstration in which campus police were caught on video dousing seated protesters with pepper spray.

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed suit charging that the Dinuba Unified School District and the State of California were violating students' fundamental right to equal educational opportunity.

Does a school district have the authority to expel students based on an incident involving a school resource officer that occurred off campus and after school? A Contra Costa County Superior Court ruled in May 2008 that the Antioch Unified School District violated the rights of two students when it expelled them from school following an off-campus incident in which police officers pepper-sprayed the students and forcefully arrested them. The judge overturned the expulsions. The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California and Berkeley attorney Jivaka Candappa sued the district on behalf of the students, arguing that it lacked the authority to expel the students based on the incident, and that the students' due process rights were violated during the expulsion hearings.

In March 2007, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed a lawsuit in Napa Superior Court on behalf of five families, seeking judicial relief from an unconstitutionally vague, overbroad, and restrictive dress code enforced by Redwood Middle School and the Napa Valley USD.